Salted rice malt marinated skate cheek

One of my pleasures in life includes crazy food shopping. This means buying foods I have no idea what they are. I than take them home and see what and how I can cook with them. One of my cupboards is full of unknown ingredients. Some I can find on search engines but some are still in their packaging waiting for me to work up a courage and imagination to use them.

I was absolutely delighted when I saw salted rice malt. I had never heard of it and I simply had to buy some. Looking it up I learnt that it is used for marinating, mainly meat, it breaks down proteins, tenderising the meat and adding a subtle sweetness. I couldn’t wait to use it.

Every now and then, but not very often, there are skate cheeks on sale. I have only seen them once before and cooked them with courgette, here is the recipe.

This time I wanted to do something different and I thought it might be time to try the salted rice malt.

Marinated skate cheeks

preparation time 15 minutes

cooking time about 7 minutes

serves 4 as a starter

Ingredients

16 skate cheeks/ 4 pp

enough salted rice malt to cover the trimmed skate cheeks

oil for pan frying, I used rapeseed oil

salt

Trim the skate cheeks and place them in a bowl. Cover with salted rice malt. It doesn’t look pretty but it will bring out a lot of flavour.

Marinating skate cheeks

Heat the oil in a frying pan on just above medium heat. Don’t wipe the skate cheeks, the salted rice malt will caramelise and taste lovely. Salt them lightly before pan frying.

hi Becky
Thank you for stopping by and I hope you find something to inspire you! 🙂 The skate cheeks were delicious and a bit of a rare treat, I think the fishmonger only does them when he has the time!
Have a lovely week! 🙂

hi Loretta
I just love to experiment and have a whole box of hmm.. un known ingredients! I am determined to get through them, let’s see what happens! 🙂
I am glad you like them, the salted rice malt is lovely with fish and I think meat as well. Even just a coating gives a wonderful caramelized coating, I must get more. I think this was one of the better discoveries!
Have a great week! We have sunshine and rain! Perhaps i should go and chase the rainbow! 🙂

hi Sumith
I am glad you like it. The fishmonger said the skate cheeks are also called poor mans scallops so I thought fitting to serve them on a scallop shell!
The cheeks are an absolute treat. I loved the salted rice malt and to try new things, especially when it works this well! 🙂 Have a lovely week!

hi Zeba
Am glad you like it! It worked really well and I have discovered that the salted rice malt helps give the fish (or meat) a wonderful golden color when pan frying it! I will absolutely buy lots more of this 🙂